Hidden Bibliographic Details
| ISBN: | 9780191529498
0191529494
9780191516085
0191516082
9780199288717
0199288712
1280756241
9781280756245
0199288712
0199243840
9780199243846
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| Notes: | Originally published: Oxford: Clarendon, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Print version record.
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| Summary: | David Papineau presents a controversial view of human reason, portraying it as a normal part of the natural world, and drawing on the empirical sciences to illuminate its workings. In these six interconnected essays he offers a fresh approach to some long-standing problems. Papineau rejects the contemporary orthodoxy that genuine thought hinges on some species of non-natural normativity. He explores the evolutionary histories of theoretical and practical rationality, indicating ways in which capacities underlying human reasoning have been selected for their biologicaladvantages. He then looks at the connection between decision and probability, explaining how good decisions need to be informed by causal as well as probabilistic facts. Finally he defends the radical view that a satisfactory understanding of decision-making is only possible within a specificinterpretation of quantum mechanics. By placing the subject in its scientific context, Papineau shows how human rationality plays an explicable role in the functioning of the natural world.
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| Other form: | Print version: Papineau, David, 1947- Roots of reason. Oxford : Clarendon Press ; Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006 0199288712
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